Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro

I first read Mike Monteiro‘s Ruined by Design at the beginning of the pandemic, and right away the ideas in it transformed the way I see the world in ways big and small. From political systems and bureaucracies to tech and user interfaces, industrial design, surveys, laws and public policy. Everything is design, and we’re frequently (and sometimes deliberately) baking flaws, blind spots and discrimination into the things we make.

I picked it up again last week after my teenager (and artsy weirdo) asked me about ‘that design book I always talk about’. I’d lent my copy to someone and never got it back, so I bought another one. Figured I’d read it again to see if anything in the past five years made the book feel stale or outdated.

I’ve run design studios my whole career. Still do today, even if it’s more dispersed than a proper studio. Back before Ruined by Design was published, Monteiro reached celebrity status among the team with this Goodfellas-inspired talk. You only need the first two minutes, but you’ll probably watch the whole thing anyway:

This was even better than I remembered. It’s a cranky and funny complement to Brian Merchant‘s Blood in the Machine. Where Merchant’s book was history and context of how exploited workers fought back against capital, Monteiro provides a how-to: ethics and career advice to the modern tech worker, and anyone else in a role with influence on how things work.

Ruined by Deisgn is an angry, exasperated, funny and insightful book meant for designers. But Monteiro’s definition of ‘designer’ includes pretty much everyone. If you have influence over how something interacts with people — whether a corporate graphic designer, someone crafting public policy or infrastructure, or making a meal, parts of this book apply to you.

His thesis is basically a twist on the axiom that the purpose of a system is what it does. We are responsible for both the positive and negative results of using the things that we help create. Facebook connects people around the world, but it also enables election manipulation, genocide and harm to marginalized communities. Those failures happen in part because of a failure of imagination, a failure to consider, and more importantly, to involve, a broad base of people and perspectives in the things that we do. He writes in a casual and irreverent way:

Designing something without understanding the ramifications of what it does is as unethical as designing something you know to be harmful.

But, won’t somebody else make it? I get this question a lot too. The answer is yes. They might. And holy shit, that can make you feel powerless. But here’s the thing: just because the person next to you might be an asshole, it’s not a good excuse for you to be one. I get that you don’t want to lose your job, and I get that you have rent to pay, but earning your living at the expense of someone else’s livelihood, or life, is not a good way to live.

Ruined by Design was written pre-pandemic, pre-January 6, and pre-Trump 2.0, so there is a little bit of wide-eyed innocence in the book. He starts one section with a warning that he’s going to upset some readers by talking about vaccines: man, if you only know what’s about to happen. He refers frequently to action of employees at Microsoft and Google impacting choices the companies made about things like diversity and working with ICE — that optimism feels ancient in the face of what’s happening with the current bunch of clowns in charge.

The ground this book covers isn’t new, of course, but Monteiro’s perspective and voice are. He’s funny and conversational, and critically, he’s optimistic. There’s lots of good in the world, we should work to get it done, and to foil the villains’ plans. The people he’s writing to are well-intentioned (except if you work at Palantir), and need work. Ruined by Design is a call to those people to take action – to organize and to stand up for good. In the last few chapters, he cites specific actions—unionizing, licensing, professsional organizations—and makes the case for why applying professional standards to designers could contribute to change.

Any time I re-read something that I love, there’s a risk that it what’s actually on the page is won’t measure up to my memory of it. That didn’t happen with Ruined by Design — it’s every bit as essential as it was the first time around. I can’t wait to discuss it with my kid.